David Lane, one of the leading lights of contemporary white supremacy, has kicked the bucket - possibly by his own foot.

Lane, 68, was found dead of natural causes in his prison cell last Monday. Suffering from epilepsy (an illness that would have seen him off to the gas chambers if he had ever been successful in overthrowing the American government) he had voluntarily not re-filled his prescription since January. After suffering a seizure, he stopped breathing, and an ignoble life was finally brought to an end.

Embracing the John Birch Society in his youth, Lane eventually moved on to the Klan and the Aryan Nations, before helping found The Order.

Based on the organisation of the same name in The Turner Diaries, The Order murdered a number of people, bombed a number of buildings, and stole a whole bunch of money to fund further terrorist attacks. $4.1 million, actually. Lane was sentenced to 190 years in prison after he participated in the murder of an anti-racist shock jock.

In prison, unable to kill and maim as he pleased, Lane was forced to make do with literary terrorism. Propaganda of the most turgid kind was eaten up by his fans on the outside - indeed, his 14 words and 88 precepts remain popular credos amongst neo-Nazis today.

His worst literary crime, however, was the self-published mastubatory fantasy KD Rebel. Released in 2004, it depicts a group of American Wotanists living in the sticks who make occasional trips into the cities where they kidnap women to rape. It makes the Turner Diaries look like Shakespeare, and finishes with the Wotanist group hearing that Russian fash have overthrown the government and deciding to commit massive terrorist actions to overthrow their own.

Lane’s last victim, Alan Berg, was targeted for murder because he had called Lane a “sick and pathetic human being.” It’s a fitting epitaph for both Lane and those who hold him up as a hero.